Many since the turn of the century have studied management theory. Although examples of management practise can be traced back several thousand years, the development of management as a field of knowledge is recent. Much of the impetus for developing management theories and principals came from the industrial revolution and factory growth in the early 1800s. With factories became a widespread need to coordinate large numbers of people in producing goods. Some individuals began to think about ways to run factories more efficiently and effectively. Later known as preclassical management contributors, they focused on particular techniques to solve specific problems. They were then followed by individuals who developed broader principles and theories which formed the bases of the major viewpoints, or schools, of management; classical, which emphasised finding ways to more efficiently manage work and organisations; behavioural, which tried to understand factors affecting human behaviour in organisations; quantitative, which focused on mathematics, statistics and information aids to supporting managerial decision making and effectiveness and contemporary, which represents ,major innovations in ways of management thinking. Several approaches contributed to the development of these viewpoints in to what methods and theories managers rely on and use today.
             It is important therefore to understand the different perspectives and approaches to management theory that has evolved throughout the history of organisations for two main reasons. The first being that almost all the major theories developed in the past still exist in some shape or form today. Managers thus need to understand that there is a place for scientific management as there is a place for administrative theory, but both should be tempered by the contributions from the human relations movement as well as systems and contingency theory. The second reason being that with a knowledge...